 |
|
Looking at the plates (I have the same set, bolted to my struts but not yet back in the car), it seems to me that if you put the wide side forward, you are mean-shifting your caster adjustment range towards more positive caster. If you put the wide side toward the firewall, you’d mean-shift your caster adjustment range toward less positive caster. I would imagine the ranges would overlap.
Anyone care to double check my spatial reasoning here?[/quote]
So are yours bolted up like mine will be?
Looking at the plates (I have the same set, bolted to my struts but not yet back in the car), it seems to me that if you put the wide side forward, you are mean-shifting your caster adjustment range towards more positive caster. If you put the wide side toward the firewall, you’d mean-shift your caster adjustment range toward less positive caster. I would imagine the ranges would overlap.
Anyone care to double check my spatial reasoning here?[/quote]
So are yours bolted up like mine will be?[/quote]
Actually, I think I put them on backwards. I think my brain wasn’t working that day, so I went off of memory instead of spacial reasoning.
Mine will be bolted up in that fashion (wide side forward), nothing I can’t fix in five minutes with an impact and a 19mm thin wall socket.
Out of curiosity, what sort of caster do you guys shoot for? I will be setting up the car ‘for the first time,’ so a rough target would be nice.
Ok so I guess I don’t need this part anymore, right?
Here’s what I’m left with. There are two washers as you can see on top of the spring perch. One has grease on it. Do I want to keep these washers or get rid of them?
Here’s the underside of the camber plate.
And here’s the top of the camber plate with this washer thingy removed.
Now where do I put the grease? Also, what kind of grease?
It looks like I just need to stick the camber plate in first and then slide the strut up through it and then thread on the shock nut a bit. From there I should be able to just make sure that the spring perch is aligned correctly and then tighten everything up and then reinstall the tie rod and control arm and be done.
Has anyone run into issues with the top perch moving around or does it pretty much stay put once the shock center nut is tightened up? Since the race springs are a lot shorter they don’t put any force against the perch to keep it in place.
Elephant had them last time I needed some. I don’t think it’s on the website though, you have to ask for them.
http://elephantmotorsports.com/
Jeremy
You need the washer. The thing with the greese on it is the dust cap for the stock bearing.
That makes sense. So I’ll retain the one washer and get rid of the dust cap. Where should I grease it at?
Thanks guys for the help so far. Usually things go smoothly but what I thought would be a 2 hour job quickly became a huge mess. I think I’m on the right track now.
Once you get weight back on the front end the springs will compress against your new plates. As someone else here already mentioned, before you lower the front end, make sure the springs are rotated to the right orientation in the lower perch and index the top perch to the top of the springs.
The lower perches have 2 holes in them-perfect for zip ties to hold the springs in position relative to the lower perches.
You are correct when the wheels are off the ground the top of spring is not in firm contact with top perch.
To minimize the hassle this causes, my rule of thumb is to always center the wheels before jacking up and lowering, so generally the top plate remains aligned with spring.
So the only question I have left is where do I apply the grease and what kind should I use?
I fashioned an “injector” - you could use a big plastic hypodermic thing. I squirted a “bead” of grease along the top and bottom perimeter of the bearing - basically to cover the moving surfaces where the inside of the bearing will move away from vertical relative to the outside of the bearing.
[quote=“swolfe” post=71929]Do you guys keep the rear spring pads?
Sorry, a little o/t.[/quote]
Remove the rear spring pads but hang on to them. They may end up being useful when you work on getting good corner weights.
I recently posted a thread here asking about repairing a boot I ripped. I tried twice to contact Elephant with no response. I wound up using some Permatex RTV on it.
Haven’t tested it out yet.
Rescue tape looks like an interesting product.
Huh. I emailed Elephant and they got right back to me. They’re shipping some boots out to me and I should have them Tuesday.
If the control arms are old I’d replace them instead of just the dust boots. However, mine are almost brand new (less than one year old and only four DEs) so I didn’t want to just junk them.